Remember Fiona Apple? She's dropped the angst and sounds almost completely different from way back when in those Tidal days. I think I mentioned this on my website this past summer, but I found another leaked demo track, and I thought I'd share, due to extreme awesomeness.

Her album has been shelved by the people at Sony, with no definite release date at this point. Judging from these two songs, I can sort of understand where they're coming from though -- no hooks to speak of and kind of quirky and hard to get into, but it's different (in a good way, I think). It would be a real shame if this never saw the light of day.

Yeah, a Kean should come with every Ipod. Or better yet, a Kean should come as a platform independent add-on to your music collection device, portable or not, doesn't matter. In favor of the "Kean a millionaire" initiative the possibility of a "Kean guidance to good music algorithm" should be explored. 4 million emails a day for Kean I say!

Trust me, you wouldn't want to hear all of my suggestions. What you're getting on these boards is a very filtered version of my musical tastes. I doubt very many people would want to hear me gush about the new thing in progressive house (11 minutes of breakbeat for one song? Not long enough, says I!!), or the new Kylie Minogue "best of" CD (like, I'm seriously thinking about buying that CD).

Finally got around to actually listen to this album in one sitting, and it's definitely the best thing I've heard out of Fiona Apple -- I never really cared much for her early music, but this is good, good stuff.

John Darnielle (that Mountain Goats fella) also brings up some good points about the Sony/Apple standoff, over at Last Plane to Jakarta.